by Patrick Ogle
A Summer of Drowning by John Burnside.
Like most John Burnside books this one makes you work. You have to put on your thinking cap and focus to keep up with what is going on. You wonder; is this all supernatural or is it perfectly natural. What is “natural” can certainly be strange and disturbing. This isn't the sort of disturbing that is graphic or bloody. It is a much more subtle type of unease he calls forth.
At some point, you will ask yourself; how reliable is the narrator? If you go back through this book you will find that narrator contradicting themselves–or at least second guessing their conclusions. Which may seem confounding but in actual life we ALL do this constantly.
A Summer of Drowning may be a bit more accessible than other Burnside books I’ve read–The Glister and The Devil’s Footprints but it has been some time since I read those. This book is dark but those were even darker but there is a beauty to the language. Burnside is also a poet which isn’t surprising because there is something different about his work. I started to write that it is “poetic” but that is more than a bit unimaginative. I would say that it leaves options for the reader to choose what to believe, to choose what arc of the story to believe. Even before I KNEW he wrote poetry I knew there was something unique about his style. This isn’t me being clever either. I am not special. Most folks notice this when reading his work.
You will hear “prose writers cannot write poetry” (or visa versa). This is nonsense, of course, it is likely more that poets and prose writers CHOOSE to write what they are most comfortable with–and Burnside is a master of both. I’ve read three books and each stayed with me for some time after finishing.
I immediately started looking for something else by the author.
A Summer of Drowning by John Burnside.
Like most John Burnside books this one makes you work. You have to put on your thinking cap and focus to keep up with what is going on. You wonder; is this all supernatural or is it perfectly natural. What is “natural” can certainly be strange and disturbing. This isn't the sort of disturbing that is graphic or bloody. It is a much more subtle type of unease he calls forth.
At some point, you will ask yourself; how reliable is the narrator? If you go back through this book you will find that narrator contradicting themselves–or at least second guessing their conclusions. Which may seem confounding but in actual life we ALL do this constantly.
A Summer of Drowning may be a bit more accessible than other Burnside books I’ve read–The Glister and The Devil’s Footprints but it has been some time since I read those. This book is dark but those were even darker but there is a beauty to the language. Burnside is also a poet which isn’t surprising because there is something different about his work. I started to write that it is “poetic” but that is more than a bit unimaginative. I would say that it leaves options for the reader to choose what to believe, to choose what arc of the story to believe. Even before I KNEW he wrote poetry I knew there was something unique about his style. This isn’t me being clever either. I am not special. Most folks notice this when reading his work.
You will hear “prose writers cannot write poetry” (or visa versa). This is nonsense, of course, it is likely more that poets and prose writers CHOOSE to write what they are most comfortable with–and Burnside is a master of both. I’ve read three books and each stayed with me for some time after finishing.
I immediately started looking for something else by the author.
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